Since everybody in the technology world is apparently having a vacation, and nobody told me about it, we're kind of low on news. As such, this seems like the perfect opportunity to gripe about something I've always wanted to gripe about: a number of common mistakes in English writing in the comments section. I'll also throw in some tidbits about my native language, Dutch, so you can compare and contrast between the two.

What's the difference? In "historical", the second syllable gets the stress, so the "h" on the first, unstressed syllable melts away. Hence the "an". But with "history", the first syllable is stressed and so the "h" gets fully pronounced, and therefore "a" is used. It's like Thom says - it's not the spelling, it's how the following word sounds.